The process by which the commune of Măcărești would merge with the municipality of Ungheni stalled at the decisive step. On 16 June, the draft decision on voluntary amalgamation did not gather the number of votes needed in the Communal Council — even though, just a few days earlier, a citizens’ assembly in the commune had approved it. Now the story restarts: at the request of a group of councillors, mayor Sergiu Manciu convened an extraordinary session for 22 June, with a single subject on the agenda — initiating the amalgamation procedure with Ungheni.
What the act shows
The convening is not a rumour, but a public act. Through Disposition no. 31 of 17 June, entered in the State Register of Local Acts, the mayor sets the extraordinary session for 22 June, 9.00, basing it on the Law on local public administration, which allows councillors to request a convening, and on the request submitted to that effect. According to the Măcărești city hall, the request came from seven local councillors.
The city hall is also the one that confirms the 16 June outcome: the subject had already been on the council’s table, «but the draft decision did not gather the number of votes needed for approval». How close the vote was, how many councillors were absent or opposed — is not known: the result does not appear in a public document, only in the city hall’s communication.
An assembly said “yes”, the council did not confirm
The stake lies precisely in this reversal of the usual pattern. As a rule, critics of amalgamation fear that city halls will be closed over people’s heads. In Măcărești the opposite happened: the people, gathered in an assembly, voted for the union — 24 in favour, 3 against and 2 abstentions, among those who remained to vote, according to our earlier report — and the elected council did not carry the decision forward.
Which vote weighs more? Legally, the answer is clear: the citizens’ assembly has a consultative role, while the decision that counts is taken in the local council. That is exactly why the 16 June blockage is not a procedural detail, but the moment when the will expressed by an assembly met the arithmetic in the room. The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM), which represents mayors, asks in fact that the abolition of a city hall go through a local referendum, not just an assembly — an argument that, in Măcărești, takes an unexpected turn.
What is gained — and what is being misrepresented
For the municipality of Ungheni, Măcărești would be the eleventh locality gathered around the city, on top of the ten for which the administration opened the procedure on 10 June. The commune — about 4,200 inhabitants at the 2014 census — is even above the 3,000 threshold the reform considers the minimum for a viable city hall, and it lies some 25 kilometres from the city; for it, the merger is a choice rather than a necessity dictated by numbers. Recently, Parliament also removed the 25-kilometre distance limit between merging localities, opening the way for such more distant communes too.
One point deserves clarification, because confusion has already gathered around it. The «3,000-lei» stimulus people talk about does not mean money placed in each citizen’s hand. According to the local administration reform concept, the sum is calculated «per inhabitant», but it is intended for infrastructure investment in the new unit — water, sewerage, roads — not for individual payments. For the entire reform package, the state estimates over 6.4 billion lei by 2030.
What comes next
On 22 June, the Măcărești councillors meet again to repeat exactly the vote that failed. If the project passes this time, the commune officially enters the amalgamation procedure with Ungheni; if it fails again, the merger hangs in the air, on an already tight calendar — the voluntary amalgamation stage should be completed by the end of July. Two things that are now missing from the public space remain to be learned, at the source: exactly how the 16 June vote looked, and what separates the councillors who did not approve the merger from the citizens who asked for it.
The convening of the 22 June session and the agenda come from Disposition no. 31 of 17 June 2026 of the mayor of Măcărești commune, an act published in the State Register of Local Acts; the date of the 16 June session — from Disposition no. 30 of 11 June. That the project did not gather the votes on 16 June, and the figure of seven councillors who signed the request, come from the public announcement of the Măcărești city hall and could not be confirmed from a document recording the vote; we attribute them explicitly. The result of the citizens’ assembly (24–3–2) was reported by Triunghi.md on 14 June. The data on the financial stimulus and the population threshold come from the local administration reform concept; the changes on distance and deadlines — from the Government’s statement. As of publication, Triunghi.md had not obtained a reaction from the city hall or the councillors involved.